


a study in flames

by Resamille



Series: a park in amsterdam [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Magical Creatures, Mild Angst, Multi, Reincarnation, Shapeshifting, Temporary Character Death, except bo is a mess and what is happening, he's literally a phoenix its for like 2 minutes, phoenix!bokuto, plus a dash of body horror, supportive boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 19:52:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17310803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resamille/pseuds/Resamille
Summary: Bokuto Koutarou, all things considered, is adjusting well to life with his soulmates and this whole newly-made magical creature thing. He's got it in the bag.So he thinks.Or: Bokuto goes through his first rebirth.





	a study in flames

**Author's Note:**

> i fucked with spotify so hard for this fic bc i made a playlist with every song relating to fire stuff but with no correlation of genre and spotify was so confused as to what songs to recommend lmao
> 
> i'll be real honest this fic is not what i expected it to be
> 
> and no, bob, you did not make it to the final draft.

Some days, he is a bonfire.

Some days, he is vivacious and passionate, fire dancing in his eyes, heart warmed by the flames. Some days, he lights up like the sun, energetic and insatiable. Some days, he runs the world, and everything goes exactly his way, as it should, and he, at the center, basks in the expanse of it all. Some days, all is well.

Other days, he is a candle.

On these days, the world is a gust of wind to torment him. On these days, he needs someone to protect him, to cup their hands around the tiny flame and keep it safe.

Today is one of those days.

Koutarou watches a bird in the distance, from his place on the roof of the apartment building. Keiji and Tetsurou went to the store. Kenma is still inside, playing one of his games. Koutarou should go inside, press close to Kenma until he allows Koutarou in, use his warmth and proximity to push away the odd tightening in his chest.

It's been a year since their return to Amsterdam; a year to grow accustomed to the new thing that Koutarou's become; a year to fall in love, so completely, all over again.

He wouldn't trade that for the world.

Yet—

Why does he feel this looming darkness?

Koutarou lifts his gaze to the cloudy sky, and squints at the rather large bird, which is really not a bird at all.

Tobio lands gingerly on the corner of the building, claws scraping against the cement. A moment later, his bare feet pad against the roof as he approaches. He nods at Koutarou. “You going flying?”

Koutarou shakes his head. “Nah, just watching the clouds.”

Tobio shrugs. “Suit yourself. You can watch them a lot better from up there.”

Koutarou just shrugs.

Tobio, despite everything, notices it instantly. “Something wrong? Should I go get Keiji?”

Koutarou does smile at that. Perhaps it's the thought that Keiji is one of the _moms_ of their friend group. Perhaps it's the thought of Keiji alone. “It's okay. I'm good.”

Tobio quirks an eyebrow at him, and then nods. He goes inside.

Koutarou lied.

 

Koutarou _burns_. Keiji's breath is hot against his shoulder as they both come down from the recent high. Their skin is sweaty, sticking where Keiji splays across Koutarou's back, body searing at every contact. Koutarou shifts just enough to turn his head to meet Keiji's lips. Everything is warm, all-consuming.

Keiji's lips slide against his, tongue languid and controlled all at once, even as Keiji pants into Koutarou's mouth. Koutarou gets lost in it, in the pressure of Keiji against him, the press of his mouth, the taste of him, delicious and desiring.

Keiji peels himself off Koutarou, and Koutarou barely manages to open his eyes, only to meet Kenma's amber gaze, sated, for now, but still hungry. He's already had his turn. Looks like that won't be enough.

But it's not Kenma who approaches Koutarou. Tetsurou places a soft kiss to Koutarou's nape as he takes Keiji's place, draped across Koutarou's back. “How you doin' there, Babe?” he murmurs into the curve of Koutaoru's neck.

“Good,” Koutarou gasps out. “So good.”

“You're so perfect,” Tetsurou whispers. “Love you.”

The words are stolen from Koutarou's lungs as Tetsurou slides into him, and Koutarou _burns_ all over again.

 

“I don't know what I expected,” Keiji sighs, as Koutarou limps weakly into the clearing, wings tucked close to his body. “This was going to happen eventually.”

“I'm sorry!” Shouyou cries, for about the eighth time. They'd been play-fighting, but, well, a dragon and a phoenix together is bound to cause some havoc. Normally, it just results in a couple small fires and maybe some singed hair. This time it got a little out of hand.

Koutarou lets out a chirp—more of a warble, but technicalities. It trembles, slightly, but it's cheerful. He doesn't mean to make Shouyou feel bad, but he wants to get fixed up before he transforms back. As is, he's not sure what a broken leg and ruffled feathers will mean for his human body.

“I'm sure it's fine, Shouyou,” Keiji says. He reaches out and wraps his hand around Koutarou's beak, holding him in place. “You need to be _careful_.”

Koutarou nods, moving Keiji's hand along with it. Of his partners, Keiji is the only one who can touch him like this. He's immune to Koutarou's fire. Though his beak is relatively safe, the rest of him is not, each feather encased in flames. Koutarou's not sure if Keiji's immunity a healer thing or a unicorn thing, but Keiji is both, so it doesn't really matter.

Keiji sighs and moves his hand to smooth down Koutarou's neck. He leans forward, pressing his forehead against the curve of Koutarou's beak. “You're going to give me a heart attack one day. I saw you fall.”

Koutarou trills at him, a soft, apologetic coo. At least, he hopes it sounds apologetic. Communication without proper human vocal chords is difficult.

“Okay, let me see,” Keiji orders.

“I'm sorry!” Shouyou says again. Nine.

Koutarou lowers himself to the ground, flopping partially on his side to stick out his hurt leg. Before him, Keiji shifts, pale skin turning to white flank. With a gentle toss of his mane, Keiji lowers his head to touch the tip of his horn to Koutarou's leg.

For a moment, it feels white-hot—like when you touch something so hot that it feels cold—and then, the pain is gone. As soon as Keiji begins to pull away, Koutarou scrambles back onto his feet to test his weight on his newly healed leg.

Keiji returns to his human form, and Koutarou chirps happily at him.

“You're welcome,” Keiji says. His gaze softens into fondness. “Let me help you straighten your feathers?”

Koutarou feels a rush of affection, and he nods. Settling down once again, he extends a wing towards Keiji. As a phoenix, his feathers aren't true feathers, just as he's not a true bird. There is magic entwined with them, fire tangled into his being.

In a small voice, Shouyou asks, “Can I help? I feel bad...”

Koutarou lets out a squawk. Shouyou jumps, startled. You'd think he'd have more backbone, being a dragon and all. He could eat Koutarou if he really wanted, since fire doesn't hurt him either.

“That was a yes, I believe,” Keiji translates, running his fingers through the flames and feathers at the top of Koutarou's wing. He has to stay standing to reach; Koutarou's outstretched wing is nearly shoulder height on Keiji. “Come here, Shouyou. I'll show you how.”

Shouyou obeys, and reaches out to mimic Keiji as he combs his fingers through Koutarou's feathers. Koutarou bumps his head against Shouyou's shoulder in thanks. Shouyou laughs and scritches at the feathers at Koutaoru's chest.

And still—something in him dwindles; a small candle against the restless wind.

 

The moment is quiet. The only light in the living room is the TV, the soft drone of voices whispering lullabies to Koutarou as he lounges with Tetsurou. Keiji and Kenma have already gone to bed, and the night caresses them, timeless and inviting.

Tetsurou is laying against Koutarou's chest, dozing, when Koutarou first notices it.

There's an itch under his skin. Normally, it means he wants to transform, to fly and be free, but he'd already gone out the day before. He shouldn't feel anxious about it again this soon.

He must start squirming unconsciously because Tetsurou shifts and wraps his arms more firmly around Koutarou. “You good?” he murmurs without opening his eyes.

“Yeah,” Koutarou answers. Lies.

“You don't gotta stay with me if you wanna go to bed,” Tetsurou says, and one eye cracks open to look up at Koutarou's face. Then both eyes flies open. “Kou, what's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong,” Koutarou tells him. His voice wavers.

Tetsurou sits up. “You're crying?”

“I am?” Koutarou asks.

Tetsurou reaches for him, using his thumb to wipe through the tear tracks across Koutarou's cheekbones. “You didn't realize? Are you sad?”

Koutarou shakes his head. “Not sad.”

“Why are you crying?”

“Dunno,” Koutarou answers honestly. He licks his lips, and tenses.

“Kou?” Tetsurou asks, concern lacing his voice.

“'M gonna go wash my face,” Koutarou mumbles out. He dumps Tetsurou on the couch and flees.

Tears are supposed to be salty.

Koutarou stares at himself in the mirror, watches rust-tinted droplets slip down his cheeks.

Instead of salt, he'd tasted blood.

 

He needs the fire to keep going. He needs the warmth, the closeness, the love.

He needs a reason to keep going, needs tinder, needs fuel.

The candle flickers.

 

Koutarou extracts himself from the tangle of limbs on the bed. Thankfully, he'd been on the edge this time. The four of them squish onto a king-sized mattress on most nights, though that's not always the case.

Koutarou had been curled around Keiji when he felt a chill grip his spine. He'd woken with a start, and scrambled to get away from the others. He scratches at his arm while he slips into the bathroom. In the dark, he hits his hip on the sink and lets out a high-pitched _fuck!_ Before he can manage to get the door closed and the lights on.

He blinks in the bright light, staring at himself in the mirror. There's no tears now, only dark circles under his eyes. He's still scratching his arm.

It's so cold, but also—he's wearing too much. Koutarou tugs his shirt off.

It doesn't help. His skin feels like it doesn't fit him anymore. He drags his nails harshly down his back, contorting to reach behind him. His fingers catch on skin, nails tearing at flesh.

Something pricks under his fingernail, pain sparking up his arm, and Koutarou jerks away from it. He turns, craning his head to look at his back in the mirror. While he stares, he unconsciously scratches at his arms again.

After a moment of consideration, and seeing nothing, Koutarou reaches back for the place he'd felt the spark of pain. He runs the pads of his fingers over it, and feels something catch. He uses his nails to pry at it, and eventually—it pulls lose.

Pinched between his fingers is one of his feathers.

Instead of fire, it's wet with something. Not blood. Not water. Something else, matting the barbs down to the quill. Koutarou's throat goes dry.

He suddenly has to scratch his arm again, and this time, he digs multiple feathers out from under his skin. They leave no wound behind, except on his mind, watching a part of him abandon him.

Someone knocks on the door with a murmur of his name. Koutarou panics and closes his hand around the feathers. A couple of the quills poke him, but he ignores that and turns to face the door, hiding his hand behind his back.

Keiji cracks the door open. Of course, Koutarou had forgotten to lock it. “You okay?”

“F-fine,” Koutarou chokes out.

Keiji doesn't let him get away with it. He lets himself into the bathroom. “What's wrong?”

Koutarou shakes his head. He's about to open his mouth to say something—some excuse—when he feels something give in his hand.

Horrified, he brings his fist around to his front and opens it, only to find the feathers had turned to ash under his fingertips.

“Koutarou?” Keiji whispers, inching closer.

“I—I don't k-know...” Koutarou whimpers. “What's happening—”

He scratches at his side, this time, and Keiji watches as Koutarou pulls a new batch of broken feathers from his body.

Keiji stares for a moment. Koutarou thinks he's about to cry. Actually, he probably already is.

“Kou,” Keiji murmurs. He reaches out and brushes his knuckles against Koutarou's jaw. “It's okay. You'll be okay. I think you're going through your first rebirth.”

Keiji is probably right. Keiji is right about pretty much everything. Koutarou takes in a breath. He nods.

Keiji worries his lip. “I'm sorry, I knew this was coming sometime. I should have looked into it more thoroughly. I'm sorry I wasn't prepared. Do you think you can hold out until morning until I can get some more information?”

Koutarou swallows, and resists the urge to scratch again. He probably won't get any sleep, but it will be fine, as long as he waits until Keiji wakes up. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Keiji says, still soft, and smiles at him, reassuring. “Back to bed?”

“Keiji?” Koutarou asks, in a small voice. “Don't tell Kenma?” Koutarou knows Kenma is the most worried about them—constantly. Koutarou knows that the idea of losing him, even for a little, would be bad for Kenma.

Keiji considers this for a moment. “I... okay,” he finally agrees. “For now.”

“I'm gonna...” Koutarou says. “...go sleep on the couch.”

“Do you need anything?”

Koutarou shakes his head.

Keiji nods, and slips from the bathroom.

Koutarou stands there, holding back the urge to curl into a ball and cry. Instead, he quietly makes his way to the living room, sits on the couch, and waits.

It's so cold.

 

He could not wait until morning. Not if he didn't want to burn the apartment down.

He transforms as he jumps from the roof. He didn't even bother taking off the sweats he stole from Tetsurou to sleep in, and they tear and burn as Koutarou shifts.

His wings don't catch the air.

Normally, diving off their apartment building is fun, exhilarating. Now, it's terrifying, as his wings, feathers dull and broken, flap helplessly. He manages to glide on a gust of wind enough that he doesn't plummet straight down, but Koutarou still hits the ground hard, landing in a distraught tangle in a nearby playground.

Koutarou takes a moment, laying in a painful heap, to process what's just happened.

He's not on fire. Normally, the flames caress him, keep him warm.

Now, the cool of a spring Amsterdam night bites harshly at him. Normally, he blazes, but now, he is nothing more than an ember. He is dying.

Suddenly, compelled by instinct, Koutarou struggles up. He needs to burn. He needs fire. He stumbles away from the playground, leaving a pile of half-ash feathers where he'd landed. He loses more, as he walks, as he searches.

When he finds it, he doesn't know where he is, whose property he is on, and neither does he care. The small cove of trees is the best he's going to get. He would have liked more fuel, but this will last for the length of his return. This will be the spark.

Something in Koutarou knows far more about this than he does—the phoenix in his heart keeps him safe. The knowledge comes to him like old magic. He leans heavily against one of the trees, rubbing against it. The liquid on his feathers is a firestarter. Of course it is. He knows this. In his being.

He does his best to press some of the fluid onto the bark of all the trees, but Koutarou's energy is leaving him. He manages four out of the six close-packed trunks.

Koutarou settles in an exhausted pile at the center.

With the last of his labored pants, he breathes fire onto the nearest tree. It sparks up immediately, fire climbing high on the bark until it tastes the quick kindling of leaves and spreads further. The last thing Koutarou sees is flames, consuming.

He becomes ash.

 

Koutarou blinks awake.

He smells charred ground, singed fabric. There had been trees around him, hadn't there? Now, he only sees sky, clouds, the dawn.

And Kenma.

His wings are stretched out on the ground around him, and Kenma is careful not to step on them as he shuffles closer. He kneels, and presses a silent kiss to Koutarou's beak.

Koutarou transforms back, tucking the firebird in him back into place under his ribs, always there, fluttering, flaming. “Kenma?”

Kenma throws himself at Koutarou, then, wrapping his arms around Koutarou's neck and holding him close. Koutarou automatically holds him, and presses his face into Kenma's hair. It smells burnt.

“You idiot,” Kenma huffs quietly into Koutarou's neck. “You should have said something.”

“Nothing was wrong,” Koutarou says. Because, nothing was wrong. This is as much a part of him as is flying, as is his love for his soulmates, their mark etched into his skin on his wrist.

“You left,” Kenma says, and pulls back. “You left us.”

“I didn't mean to,” Koutarou tells him, and sits up now that Kenma's not on top of him. “What happened?”

Kenma retreats further, and someone drops something directly into Koutarou's lap. Clothes.

“Apparently,” Tetsurou says, and Koutarou tips his head back to look at him, upside-down. “You went manic and destroyed my sweats last night.”

“Sorry,” Koutarou mumbles, looking back down at his lap.

Tetsurou kneels next to him, in his field of vision. “Apparently, phoenixes also need a fire around them when they resurrect. Something has to kickstart them back into action. So you did what your phoenix wanted. You started a fire.”

“Oh,” Koutarou whispers, and it comes back to him in pieces. The drive, the need for something to burn. He ducks his head to avoid Tetsurou's gaze. “Sorry, again.”

“We're sorry,” Kenma says softly. “We didn't know. We could have helped. We should have.”

“Next time,” Tetsurou says. His fingers brush under Koutarou's jaw, and he tilts Koutarou's chin up in order to press a kiss to the corner of Koutarou's mouth. “Next time, we can help. You don't have to go at this alone.”

Koutarou nods.

“Come on,” Tetsurou says, standing. “Let's go back.”

“Keiji?” Koutarou asks.

Kenma gets up. “He's talking to the owners of the park that you nearly burned down.”

“I'm sorry!' Koutarou cries. “I didn't mean to!”

“Keiji will figure it out. Don't worry,” Tetsurou assures, reaching out a hand towards. “You know how charming he is.”

Tetsurou and Kenma help him up, and he gets dressed. Together, they go home.

 

Some days, he is a bonfire. Some days, he's a candle.

But Koutarou is always a phoenix.

Kenma makes a face at him from where Keiji has him trapped against the bathroom counter. He twitches each time Keiji snips off another lock of hair.

“I blame you,” Kenma grumbles at Koutarou, who's watching, holding back laughter, from where he sits on the edge of the tub. Kenma had gotten too close to Koutaoru while he was in phoenix form after his rebirth the day before.

“You needed a haircut anyway,” Tetsurou quips from the doorway.

“I'll kill you,” Kenma snarls. “You're one to talk. You look more like Cousin It instead of a rooster each day.”

Koutarou cackles at that one, and even Keiji has to pause to finish giggling before he can keep working on Kenma's hair.

“Stop moving,” Keiji says, breathy. “You're going to make me mess up.”

“You're the one who's laughing,” Kenma snaps back.

“You're the one who made him laugh,” Koutarou points out.

Kenma's gaze flicks sideways at him. “I'll castrate you.”

“You wouldn't,” Keiji tells him calmly. “Koutarou fucks you too good.”

Kenma shuts up at that, because it's entirely true, and Keiji has to stop again to laugh.

“Okay,” Keiji finally says. He points at Koutarou with the scissors. “Out, out. You're antagonizing him too much, and if this keeps up, I'll never finish. Go do something with Tetsu.”

Koutarou dutifully squeezes past Keiji. He meets his own gaze in the mirror as he passes, and hesitates. To think, two nights ago, he wasn't sure if he'd have moments like this again. Now, he ingrains them in his mind, savors them.

“Shoo,” Keiji says, and Koutarou slips from the bathroom. Keiji closes the door behind him, leaving Koutarou in the bedroom with Tesurou.

“Hey,” Tetsurou says from where he's sitting on the bed. “Do you think if Keiji hears us fucking, he'll mess up?”

Koutarou grins at him. He gets on the bed and crawls towards Tetsurou. “Kenma's gonna kill you.”

“I'll say you started it,” Tetsurou says. “That way, if he kills you, you'll just come back.”

Koutarou pauses, sitting back on his knees. “Do you think it works like that?”

Tetsurou shrugs. “Who knows? I'm not keen on testing it. Now, come here.”

Koutarou forgets about it immediately, because he's kissing Tetsurou, mouth hot on his.

Koutarou is a phoenix. He's a wildfire. And his soulmates? They're his spark.

 

(Keiji does not mess up Kenma's hair, but he does slam the bathroom door open fifteen minutes later with a look in his eyes that says they're going to pay. Kenma looks equally as hungry, prowling in behind Keiji's intimidating figure. Koutarou may or may not have to test out that rebirth theory, after all, because Keiji and Kenma are going to kill him.)

 


End file.
